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#504 ‘Superfreaky Memories’ by Luna (6 Aug)

Justification: Actually, there is an proper video for this, but the only place I could find it was here, and couldn’t find any way to embed it. In case you’re not clicking on it right this second, it’s the site of the production company that made it –not the official Luna site or a Warners affiliate – so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Elektra commissioned it just before they dropped Luna from the roster. It’s not, it should be made clear, an amazing video. But this is an amazing song.

Look at those pupils. Say no to drugs, creepy looking dolls.

There are precious few songs that I love more than this, not least because it opened up a whole new vista for me of Luna and Dean Wareham’s previous band, Galaxie 500, thanks to this being on an Uncut compilation. Like a huge amount of these songs it’s inextricably tied to memories of a time and a place, that being the end of the millenium in Adelaide, living with my soon-to-be-wife and hanging with the people that would be my lifelong friends, playing in a band that was to take over the world.

Of course, with 13 years hindsight things maybe didn’t work out as well as I’d imagined – the Career Girls released an album and didn’t know what to do next, my wife and I split up nine years later, and most of my circle of 1999-era friends I haven’t spoken with in years – so the song’s sense of emotional dislocation and nostalgia is even more potent to me these days.

Luna split in 2005 though Wareham and his bassist/wife Britta Phillips still play music as Dean & Britta, and were in Sydney not long ago doing a Galaxie 500 show that I only found out about after the event for some reason. Fun fact: Phillips was the voice of 80s cartoon superhero/rock star Gem (as in “Gem: she’s truly outrageous / truly truly truly outrageous!”) and was one of Justine Bateman’s bandmates in Satisfaction.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010:‘Float On’ by Modest Mouse, which I just wrote the most perfunctory listing for. Sorry.